Workflow process management generally relates to the automated work management. As used herein, work generally relates to a function performed in business. Examples of tasks include processing a loan application (in the banking industry), or treating a patient (in the hospital industry). However, work need not be limited to just those functions performed in businesses. For example, work performed by governmental agencies, charities, branches of the military, or recreational tasks performed by a group of hobbyists may also be candidates for workflow process management. Thus, a workflow process management system may be considered to be a system which utilizes a set of procedural rules to manage how work is performed by participants.
The work may include tasks which require performance, documents which require creation or editing, or information which require development. For example, in the banking industry, a variety of loan documents, such as promissory notes, etc., may need to be created. Similarly, information, such as an applicant's credit rating may need to be developed by ordering credit reports. Different industries will have different work requiring different tasks, documents, and/or information. For example, a hospital require the tasks of treating a patient's condition, collecting/developing information such as a patient's medical history, and the creation and processing of a billing record for the patient.
Although the type of work may vary from entity to entity, and from industry to industry, work can still be classified into four categories, namely fixed activities, variable activities, periodic, and offline activities. Fixed activity relates to work which is not volume sensitive and which needs to be performed daily. Variable activities are daily activities which is volume sensitive. Periodic activities relates to non-daily activities, whether volume sensitive or not. Offline activities denotes any special activities such as training, special projects, or meetings. Each type of work (including time allocated for meals or breaks) can be converted into an equivalent amount of time. When expressed in hours, this time is known as earned hours. A department, which by definition is an entity which exists for performing a set of core functions, maximizes its production when it maximizes its earned hours.
For example, a department for creating widgets may find that it requires one worker one hour to produce one widget. The creation of widgets is clearly volume sensitive. Thus, widget creation is a variable activity. If the eight widgets are produced per day then the department would have 8 earned hours that day. If instead, the department produced 80 widgets in a day, that department would have 80 earned hours.
The participants managed by a work flow process management system may be different types of workers. For example, some workers are full time workers while other workers may be part-time workers. Additionally, the period of time worked by each worker may be different. Flexible time policies and different shifts may mean that different workers work different periods of time, even though the different workers are full time employees. Additionally, participants may differ from each other based upon skill level, experience level, or licensure level. For example, in a hospital setting, only physicians may be authorized to perform certain medical duties, while physicians or nurses may perform other duties. Similarly, nurses have difference level of licensure. Thus, only a registered nurse (R.N.) may be authorized to perform certain procedures while either licensed professional nurses (L.P.N) or registered nurses (R.N.) may perform other procedures.
In order for a department to perform its earned hours, the department must have sufficient worker resources to work its earned hours. Although workers may work different shifts, have different skills levels, etc., just like work to be performed can be converted into earned hours, workers can also be expressed as an equivalent amount of time. The time unit normally used for workers is known as a full time equivalents (hereinafter “FTE”). One FTE usually represents the amount of work normally performed by a worker during a day, and can be converted into a number of hours. This conversion is often affected by labor laws and regulations. For example, in many instances, during a standard 8-hour shift, a worker earns paid break at a rate of one 0.25 hour paid break per four hours worked. Thus, one FTE is equal to 8.0 hours with two 15 minute breaks within each of two consecutive four hour periods.
Since work and participants can be converted into units of time, it can be seen that a department can only ensure that all of its earned hours are converted into production if the department is staffed by an equivalent amount of FTEs. For example, if one FTE is equivalent to eight hours, the widget department would require 1 FTE per day to work 8 earned hours to produce 8 widgets. Conversely, if the widget department has 3 FTE of workers per day but only orders for 8 widget per day, two FTEs are wasted because the work can be performed by one FTE's equivalent of workers.
Each business (or other entity) has its own industry specific work and participants. Additionally, even among businesses in the same industry, the work and participants vary from business to business. In order to accommodate these differences, the traditional methodology for constructing workflow process management systems required one or more consultants to study each new business to identify its work, participants, and rules. Once the study has been concluded, a custom workflow process management application (WPMA) is created. When executed on a computer system, the WPMA and the computer system form a workflow process management system. Due to the differences between businesses, much of the work performed in constructing one WPMA generally cannot be reused for another WPMA. Accordingly, there is a need and desire for a system for quickly creating workflow process management applications while leveraging work previously performed in developing other WPMAs.